DP Challenge Part 13/100 – Resident Evil 4

Game: Resident Evil 4

Ranking: 6/100

Score: 91.45%

Well, isn’t part thirteen an apt title? Completely accidental, I assure you.

Resident Evil 4 isn’t just any zombie horror game. It’s a zombie horror game with government traitors, kidnapping and Spain. Yeah, Spain; though the game keeps referring to it as ‘Europe’ for some reason. Can floppy-haired hero Leon save the president’s daughter when she is kidnapped on his first day as her bodyguard? Given this is the same guy who faced a zombie plague in Racoon City on his first day as a cop, perhaps he should think long and hard about trying to obtain formal employment? No job is worth dying for, Leon.

'So, I'm going to hire a good-looking young blond who wouldn't look out of place in a boy band to guard my sheltered twenty-year old daughter, where they will spend countless hours alone together in potentially adrenaline-pumping danger. Yup, I can see no way in which this could be a bad idea. At all.'

Intro

The manual does a good job of conveying the schlock-horror theme of the game, and the opening sequence gives you enough backstory if you haven't played the previous games to get the gist of what's going on. You get some nicely animated cutscenes telling you your mission, and then you're thrown into the game. And okay, so it's done appallingly, but it's nice to see the makers seem to realise that there are other accents in the world than generic USA.

The manual is a little overwritten and clunky, which doesn't make it the most efficient reading experience for grasping the controls. It's also oddly cryptic at times, telling you about 'awesome action moves!' but not telling you what they are. I really wasn't a fan of the opening at all. The 'create a new save file' screens were the most boring I've seen yet, and the dialogue in the opening cutscenes was painfully bad. The main character monologues in his head in a very info-dumping manner while staring artfully out of the window; oh, and the Spanish stereotypes that are driving him to this mysterious 'European' village but can't be bothered to leave the car? Perhaps they're meant to be scared, thus proving our protagonist is brave and heroic; this doesn't come across. The sub-par acting ends up making the characterisation confusing. At least with, say, the Metal Gear Solid series, their storylines and cutscenes are so over the top and melodramatic that they become funny. This was just painful. Once it was over, I actually found myself thinking, 'Oh God, this is going to be so crap.' That is not what you want your player thinking before they even have a chance to pick up the controls!

When you're at a point where your ambition for the storytelling in a game outstrips your technical abilities (and I'm aware that around the time this game was released, this would have likely been the case), just hire a writer.  Get a proper writer who knows the craft to do your cutscenes. The animation and graphics in the opening are really nice, but the story is told in the most boring way possible. We could have started in the creepy village and had flashbacks, the Spanish police could have been terrified; they could have heard folk tales, there could have been a leaked news report on how the President's daughter hasn't been seen for days... That was literally one minute's worth of thoughts on how to make the story more interesting; I'm sure the people who made this game had a little longer to think about it. Even the font is dull and doesn't seem to convey the story - there are references to typewriters on the map and I think this is what they're going with, but why? Is our lead character a journalist or a novelist? No, he's a bodyguard. Why not give us instructions in a dossier, rather than just typed across the screen in Times New Roman? When you can go back to the animated sequences where Hunnigan assists you, you get empty boxes and text across the screen. Why not show this as an actual transcript? It seems that there are several ways to show the player who the protagonist is throughout the opening and if these were used, it could make this a far more inviting experience.

'Shooting peasants...'

Getting Going

The game sort of makes the first level a tutorial one, in that they don't throw too many enemies and problems at you at once. This gives you a chance to get a feel for the gameplay. Your goals are effectively spelled out by Hunnigan's contact with you via walkie-talkie, and also by the map icons; you'll always have an idea of where you should head, even if you're not exactly certain what you need to do when you get there. Most dangers are reasonably obvious; trip wires with huge explosive packs attached to them are clearly going to hurt you, as will bear traps. In fact, there's a really subtle bit of gameplay involving these, where you find a dog trapped in a bear-trap and you have the option to free it; this neatly draws your attention to their existence and their danger, thus ensuring you avoid the open trap that appears along your path a few moments later. You shoot enemies, move around and collect things - all of which are neatly showcased within one segment inside a hut in the first action area of the game. By the time you move onto more serious gameplay, you'll have figured out enough to keep playing. 

If you're hoping to get a nice on-screen tutorial showing you the ropes, forget it. They shove in some 'player manual' notes that you can access in your file section and that's it. You might as well simply balance the manual on your lap and glance down at it while playing; it would serve the exact same function.

The very first section where you enter an obviously dangerous hut would be the ideal place to have a few 'press B to lock on and A to fire' messages, and other key controls as you need to perform them. That's all you would need, and it would certainly feel more beneficial than a repetition of the manual.

'Shooting Cultists...'

Fun

This game does a good job of playing up to its promise of gory-horror; it keeps you in suspense as you walk around the levels and sneaks traps on you that mean you can't relax even when there aren't any enemies nearby.  The enemies themselves are suitably menacing and tend to come after you in hordes, giving you plenty of opportunity to blow pseudo-zombie heads to pieces in an explosion of blood. On top of this, you need to search areas to find items in order to proceed (or just so you can replenish ammo and health), so there's an extra dimension beyond just shooting at things. When you have to perform these additional tasks, they aren't spelled out to you; generally you get clues that help you to figure out what you need to do, which is good as it makes you think a little about your actions.

Occasionally the game felt a little cheap; for example, there are some enemies that hurl dynamite at you, and if you get hit you'll lose practically all your health. This would be okay if it seemed at all apparent that you could dodge or avoid this, but as Leon moves at the speed of a snail in treacle, it's pretty impossible. Am I supposed to find who's hidden away chucking grenades and shoot them? Am I supposed to hide? Regardless, you get very few chances to figure out a solution before you're toast and have to start again.

If you're going to have hiding enemies that can hurl projectiles at you so you have to be strategic, it would be nice to make said projectiles leave you with enough health to take a couple of hits. I think the player needs to be given a chance to work out a strategy for the situation before they're killed and have to start again, otherwise you keep repeating the same section over and over while never getting to see how you can solve the problem. Thus, boredom will set in.

'Shooting... scaffolding?'

Visuals

Everything in this game is deliberately creepy, and looks like every stereotypical 'spooky cabin in the woods' type slasher flick you'll have ever seen. A really nice touch to the game is how the character actually provides you with HUD information - you get a useful health bar, but you'll also see your character start clutching his chest as he moves or dragging his arm a little when your health really runs down. This really does make you feel in danger. Throughout the village areas everything is very much in keeping with a local 'peasant' type community, and effects such as fire and explosions are suitably illuminated in such an environment. Of course, the pseudo-zombies' head explode in a gratifying shower of blood, and blood gets splattered all over the place just as you'd expect - it's even quite accurately coloured.

The authenticity of such areas like the village mean there isn't much variety in the look of each area, which can prove a problem when you're trying to navigate it. You have to constantly take yourself out of the game to refer to the map in your inventory, and then sometimes it does the great trick of having your character symbol obscure part of the map when you're trying to figure out if you're going to hit a dead end. Oh, and I do struggle to buy playable character Leon as a government bodyguard; he looks like a boy band member. I suppose there's no reason a cute blonde can't be a kick-ass bodyguard; we had one as an intergalactic bounty hunter previously.* 

If a map of the immediate area could appear on-screen, it would be incredibly useful and make it much easier to see if you're heading where you want to be in areas where too much variety in the artistic design would make the place look less believable.

*see Metroid Prime Trilogy and Metroid Prime III: Corruption

Intelligence

Despite being essentially zombies, the enemy characters are quite varied; some will shuffle at you, others will shuffle and attack you with weapons, some will toss explosives at you and some are super speedy. They can also blow themselves up when aiming for you, which you can use to your advantage.

Ultimately, you dispatch your enemies in exactly the same way - blow their heads off and shoot until they stop moving. There's not a lot of variety to the way that you have to deal with them.

Perhaps it would be interesting to be able to use traps against the enemies; it does seem entirely possible that you could lure a swarm of pseudo-zombies into the path of some projectiles and destroy them. Why not expand on this, and allow the enemies to be lured into bear traps or trip wires? What if you could lock them up in the cabinets and storage containers you find?

When all else fails... boot to the head.

Immersion

A lot of neat touches and atmospheric additions pull you into this game and its world. The music is used very sparsely, so when there is no danger from pseudo-zombies it still feels very isolating and uncomfortable, but when the tense music starts, you know trouble is brewing. The way each level is set up is linear, but with plenty of 'dead-end' deviations where you can go meandering to try and find weapons and more information; unusually, the game doesn't tell you to go and do this, despite the fact that you can find some potentially crucial items on your sojourns. The fact that the game will allow you to self-sabotage by not exploring is incentive enough to visit every nook and cranny you can. On top of that, searching for items can also yield little clues about the story and make you curious about what's going to happen later on in the game; early on there are a lot of teasers to encourage you to keep playing. There are also sub-missions you can complete if you choose, but again, the game doesn't force you to partake in order to progress through the game.

Those teasers that are littered throughout the levels can be quite necessary to incentivise you to keep playing; at times the gameplay gets a bit repetitive. You shoot pseudo-zombies and try not to get too hurt. That's effectively it, as you can't actually move and shoot at the same time. I think perhaps the game wants you to try and be evasive, as there are options to shift furniture to block doors and the like, but your character is so sluggish that it's quite difficult to be particularly evasive - there are zombie characters that move faster than you! There's also this 'story' theme in the level naming (referring to end of a level as the end of a chapter, etc.) and with the typewriters that are used as save stations. It looks impressive, but I have struggled to see how it has anything to do with the actual game, which is set up as a government conspiracy thriller with zombies. As a result, it feels really jarring. A teeny bugbear I have is that upon picking up '1000 ptas' I now realise that the game is set in pre-Euro Spain. So, game, why not call it Spain instead of Europe? It's not as though part of Leon's mission is to figure out which country he's in - he knows.

I think this would be more enjoyable as a shoot 'em up if you could duck or hide behind things, which is not available to do in the game. It gives you a fighting chance against the hordes; especially if you're being pelted with explosives. If the game wants us to flee from the enemies and be move evasive, then make the character move faster and allow him to shoot while he moves!  I'll mention the art design again - replayable conversations could be shown as a transcript, Leon could have dossiers from the government on him; just something more interesting than that Times New Roman font being splashed across the screen. The whole typewriter and story naming would work if Leon was a journalist or had some such link to writing. Even if he was telling his story to someone in the opening cutscene, this design would tie in better.

'We're going to need a bigger boat.'

Cameras

The camera is in third person and follows behind your character; this allows you to see not only the environment and enemies, but your character himself. If he is at low health, it's apparent from his appearance. You have a free camera option that allows you to look around so you can avoid traps on the floors and so on; if you're aiming to shoot, you can use your movement controller to aim outside your standard view. Sometimes the game will offer you a binocular view so you can see greater detail in the distance, but this is something set by the game and not an option you can use at will.

There are a number of situations where you won't be able to twist your view to see, or you'll find yourself looking up into the sky when you're trying to back away to get a decent shot at the enemies. These are not only irritating, they can get you killed. However, to call these camera problems is unfair; the camera works perfectly. The problems come with the controls, and it is these that cause you the issues when you can't see what you want to (more on that later).

You control the free camera by tiling the directional pad on the Wii Remote in the appropriate direction, which feels rather awkward. As this game uses the Wii Remote, I see no reason why it can't be used to control your view; when you move the cursor to the edge of the screen, the camera angle moves in that direction. This would allow you greater visibility of the area and make it easier to target enemies.

Controls

The controls are fairly simple to use; even with the lack of in-game tutorial help, I'd managed to figure out how to move and shoot. The use of the 'A' button as an 'action' button makes gameplay decision simple - any item in the game which you can interact with will result in this option coming up on screen when you approach it. If you want to jump through a window, the action option comes up on-screen if the game will allow it. This makes it easy to see which objects you can interact with and prevents you from spending ages trying to see if you can do something with that suspicious door in front of you that just happens to be decoration.

One big problem I had with this game is that you cannot shoot and move at the same time. If you're trying to take out a bunch of pseudo-zombies heading towards you, and one sneaks up behind you, you either have to stop shooting to deal with it and have them slaughter you, or you have to hope the one behind you doesn't do too much damage as you try to take out the others. It also smacks a little false; if you were being chased by zombies (pseudo or otherwise) and you were armed (and, like your character, you actually knew how to use a handgun), you would run like hell and shoot them at the same time. Worst of all is that your instinct is to move, and the way the controls are set up means that if you try to shoot while moving, whichever direction you try to move is the direction the camera moves. This means you're not only unable to escape the encircling zombies, but now you can't shoot them until you return the camera to its original position. Usually this isn't a problem, but only because the zombies attacking you have pretty much killed you before you get your view back.

Game, just let me move and shoot. Let me move while I'm shooting. Make my shots less accurate if you must, but let me move. At the very least, make the shot direction and the movement controls different so I don't accidentally end up looking at the sky when I'm being surrounded by things that want to kill me with farming equipment. Using the Wii Remote to control my view but the nunchuck to control the character's movement is an effective way of avoiding this irritating situation.

'Shooting... I have no idea what that is.'

Ideas

The horror-film feel to the game is certainly interesting, but there is more to the gameplay that just shooting people in a mess of gore. You are encouraged to explore the various buildings dotted around your route in order to gain vital items, and the game doesn't try to hold your hand through this. There are also optional sub-missions, which you receive by finishing certain messages within the game; you have the option to get as deeply or as little involved as you choose. The way enemies crowd at you is cloying and suits the horror element of the game; I also love the little touch of seeing Leon appear injured and carry himself differently when your health gets too low, as it adds to the sense of danger. The ability to tune up your weapon power and speed as well as purchase a host of interesting power-ups is also good as it can directly impact how you play the game. For example, there's a section I reached where you have to find two pieces of an emblem to open a door, and the area is infested with zombies. You can go through the area and destroy or try to avoid zombies while searching every building for these emblem pieces. Or, you can buy a map from the 'merchant' which shows you the position of treasure and important items; suddenly this task can be streamlined. There is decent replay value when you finish the game with the addition of Ada Wong (a character you meet later in the game) as a playable character; not only in the game but in additional missions which differ from those you play as Leon - the manual also teases at being able to unlock further characters. One of the nice touches is the vast array of accents you hear; rather than sticking with generic American, the people you first encounter in Spain actually get Spanish accents. The 'merchant' you buy weapons and items from is a dodgy Cockney. It makes the world feel a little more realistic. Another thing that entertained me greatly is how funny the game is at times; the sheer level of violence does become amusing quite quickly (like all good horror films), and there's a QTE section that involves some pseudo-zombies rolling a big boulder down the hill after you, a la 'Lord of the Flies', which got a smile out of me.

The problem with all the cloying, swarming enemies is the fact that your character moves mind-numbingly slowly. Sometimes it's impossible to get away, and given you are expected to reload weapons - which leaves you open to attack - it seems a little cheap.  Also, as much as I love the varied accents, the Spanish characters are borderline horrendous stereotypes. In the first level, you meet a former Spanish cop who sounds exactly like Inigo Montoya; I get the distinct impression this game assumes all Spanish people are like this one character.

I would dearly like Leon to move a bit faster; when there are zombies who move quicker than him, it takes the Mickey a little. He is painfully slow, people avoid charity muggers on the high street quicker than this guy avoids zombies. This doesn't just make simply traversing one area to another a little tedious, it's really jarring when you're ambushed by a bunch of shuffling zombies, and your character just ambles off in whatever direction you send him. The player needs a fighting chance to hide or escape when they need to reload, and when you start playing it really doesn't feel like you have many options.

'You know, this would make a great film. Some people on a massacre, with chainsaws. Maybe not in Spain, though...'

Memory

This is an enjoyable game that combines shoot 'em up action with a smidgen of exploration and evasion. There are a lot of great elements to this game, from the nice character touches to the wide variety of power-ups you can obtain if you play the game a certain way. As much as I bemoaned the quality of the story and dialogue in the cutscenes, it's still nice that they're present; they are well animated and become more interesting as the game progresses. The fact that you can interact with certain objects that raise further questions about the story and what your character has had thrust upon them builds a suitably horrifying atmosphere. Leon even has his moments of dark humour that will raise a smile.

There are definite issues with the gameplay versus the controls. When the game requires you to think fast and be evasive, it's strange that it doesn't allow you to move at any real speed, nor move and shoot simultaneously.

It would have been nice to play this game with a slightly faster character and to be able to do things like hide behind objects and duck out to fire. As it uses a Wii Remote, you could employ similar methods used in arcade games and have the character hide behind something if you lift the Wii Remote away from the screen.

Overall, this is an atmospheric game that tries very hard to create a cutscene-heavy and complicated story. Sadly, despite some interesting exploration options and some varied QTEs, the repetitive nature of the gameplay and the awkward controls still let it down a little.